Iditarod 2007 Shagarazzi!

It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you this year's SHAGARAZZI; THE OFFICIAL INNOKO RIVER SCHOOL REPORTERS!

Please say hello to Jamie Hamilton, Justin Arrow and Jarin Howard. We also have Melanie Workman but she comes in later in the day.

The Innoko River School has been documenting the Iditarod Sled Dog Race as it comes through Shageluk since 1994 when we partnered with Walpole Elementary School in New Hampshire and shared space on their web site. We were the first to document the historical race on the Internet! Since 1999 we have had our own web site through GCI SchoolAccess and the Iditarod Area School District.

My students learn web page authoring, photography, interviewing and the skills needed to be reporters for 24-hours per day while the race is passing through our village. This year, however, a bad flu has hit our village and 6 of my other students are out sick and missing the race! As a result, I have 3 main reporters and no one to upload pages with updates so I'm stuck doing that! (but that's ok!) They've been busy as reporters on the trail and in the check-point.

Here is an interview of Jamie Hamilton by Justin Arrow who had a special job for Iditarod of being the eyes-on-the-trail and reporting in when teams came, getting the dog food and straw ready for each musher and being on call every night!

Jamie said his Uncle Arnold hired him to help maul the mushers bags of dog food and straw. He said the hardest part of the job was staying up all night and sometimes getting too cold.. He really enjoyed himself, though and will do it again the next time. He said the mushers always said "thank-you" when he came with their things and was very polite. He said he learned a little bit more about how to handle dogs from the mushers that came through. Jamie has had his own team before. He really enjoyed meeting the mushers and taking pictures of them, too.

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